


To Be Taken Under Death's Wing

by Dooiney_Oie



Series: Memories Long Buried [2]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Back in my favourite playspace which is: Kravitz backstory musing, But he's fine. He's living his best death, Gen, Maybe some minor trauma, Mother death adopts herself a new son, Not tagged for major character death bc like. Okay he's dead but he's fine p much, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-29 09:57:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16741834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dooiney_Oie/pseuds/Dooiney_Oie
Summary: The earliest, clearest memory he has, from before any of his long years of service, is of cold, silver-specked black marble under his palms.-------An arrangement of necessity, of mutual gain, and of mildly unfortunate circumstance.





	To Be Taken Under Death's Wing

**Author's Note:**

> This is a continuation of a fairly old fic of mine that I've had sitting in my drafts for a long time now. Shout out to Kat on tfw for the kind words that reminded me I never actually posted it!!

 

 

The earliest, clearest memory he has, from before any of his long years of service, is of cold, silver-specked black marble under his palms.

He'd been confused, at first. Disoriented. Fuzzy, somehow, like he'd had too much to drink and it had suddenly caught up with him all at once. It felt like he'd been taken apart into tiny, tiny pieces and then painstakingly sewn back together again, but he was still healing along the seams. Still testing what tension they could hold.

It took him a minute to find his feet. He stood shakily, and took in a room that was all shining, glistening black - that cold, deep marble on the floor, varnished ebony on the walls and high ceilings that receded into a darkness so complete it felt solid. He spun, head craned back as far as it would go to try to find a gap in it, something that might clue him in on just how far this space stretched before it ended, if it even ended at all.

There was a cough behind him, and he turned, searching for the source.

That was when he saw Her.

He gasped and fell to his knees, head bowed, because even if he'd never been a truly devout believer, he knew a goddess when he saw one, and he knew enough to be afraid of what his being brought here could mean. And as he knelt, trembling and confused on cold, _cold_ marble and more scared than he'd ever been in his life, he heard a sound that made his hair stand on end; the grating of cemetery gates and cries of pitch-dark birds on gravestones condensed into a voice.

It chuckled.

" _You may stand, child,_ " it said. " _You've nothing to fear from me._ "

Cautiously, he lifted his head to graze his eyes over the form in front of him. Graze was all he could do, with a being like that. Looking too closely made him dizzy, and so all he was left with was the impression of feathers and talons and a presence too powerful to be gracing the likes of someone like him. And he remained kneeling.

"You're... the Raven Queen," he said softly. And then swallowed, and paused to consider what that meant. "Am... am I dead?"

" _That would be the case, yes_."

That answer hit him in a surprisingly muffled manner. Like a flying housebrick that had first been wrapped in unspun wool, or a swung hammer padded with velvet.

"...Oh," he said. It made sense. Why else would he have woken up in the court of the goddess of life and death? He must've died somehow. How - how did that happen?

The more he prodded at that, the more he felt himself start to shake, spirit flickering and destabilising as more and more memory started to trickle back, uneven breaths wracking his lungs--

Were they even his lungs? If he was dead then surely--

He remembered the pain of being torn to pieces under the pure energy of someone else's soul, of knowing that he'd failed in the one thing he'd set out to do--

He hadn't managed to--

He couldn't--

And then the memory was gone, and he was... peaceful. He didn't remember what had upset him. A soothing darkness had dripped into his consciousness and softened what was sharp, smoothed over and obscured the things he'd rather not remember. It felt like someone had wrapped his mind in a blanket and set a hot cup of tea in its hands.

" _Take a moment, if you need one_ ," the Queen said gently. " _We have all time you require_."

He did stay quiet, for a long moment. He hadn't been ready to die. His brain - or, what was left of it - skimmed over the specifics, but still he was left with a sense of immeasurable loss. He'd had so much he wanted to do with his freedom, and now he was going to be trapped again. Surely there couldn't be much leeway to be had in a sea with a billion other souls, however vast.

Except he wasn't in the sea, where he should be. Which either meant that the entirety of the world's planar wizards and scholars were wrong, or something unusual was happening here.

He finally found his voice and lifted his head ever so slightly, enough for the briefest of glances at the goddess before him.

"Why am I here?" he asked. The Raven Queen oversaw the crossing, but he'd never heard of her taking a direct role in that process. Not that he'd ever _died_ before, but... he got the sense that this wasn't standard procedure. Was he being punished for something? Was all of this preamble for some kind of trial? He didn't remember doing anything worthy of the stockade, but - whatever had happened, he was sure it hadn't been good. He was sure that he didn't want to remember it, at the very least.

The goddess seemed to sense his apprehension, and brought a hand to where her mouth might be. " _Oh, my dear, you're not in trouble_ ," she told him, sounding amused. " _I'm offering you a job_."

That statement was too much to process, on top of everything else, and he found himself latching onto the same thought his mind had been stuck on for the last - the last... five minutes? Did time even exist here? It didn't feel like it did.

"But I'm dead," he said lamely, and death's goddess laughed. Despite her assurances that he needn't worry, he felt his shoulders tense tight against the sound.

" _Which is precisely the reason I'm offering_ ," she replied, cocking her head to study him more closely. " _Are you familiar with my laws, young one?_ "

He nodded quickly - a question from a goddess wasn't one to be dallied over. "You guard the balance between life and death," he recited. "You maintain the natural order and hunt down those who try to escape it."

" _Good, so you are familiar_ ," the Queen said, sounding pleased. " _And do you know how I go about hunting down those ones who need brought low?_ "

"I... no," he admitted, feeling foolish. "I never considered it. You don't just... smite them?"

The Queen gave another of her terrifying, croaking laughs, and her form seemed to lean forward in its throne. " _I have agents, child. Emissaries. Bounty hunters who are permitted to evade death by paying off their debt to me through their work_."

He stared at the stone under her feet, unable to search her face directly. "And you want... me?" he asked in a murmur, and risked a second's glance upwards, flicking his eyes away again almost immediately as the backs of their sockets started to ache. "But - why? I'm not powerful. I'm barely even a passable bard, I've never--"

Suddenly he realised what he was saying, remembered who he was speaking to, and quickly ducked his head again. "N-not that I'm questioning your judgement, of course, I just--"

A clawed hand lifted from the Queen's throne, and he quickly bit his tongue before it ended up being taken from him. But the gesture the Queen made was gentle, not wrathful.

" _Calm yourself,_ " she soothed. " _True, you're no champion, but... given the circumstances of your death_ -" (he felt a wave of sorrow and anger that immediately ebbed away without a trace) - " _I believe you have potential. And I've been encouraged by a very close friend of mine to keep an eye on you._ " The stare of an inhuman number of eyes came to rest on his shoulders, considering the rawest elements of his soul with distant curiosity. " _Give things century or two, and I think you could become more than competent. Perhaps even one of my best._ "

Her form shifted backwards in the throne again, almost casual. Like this was little more than an informal business meeting. And perhaps to her, that was all it was.

" _You can choose not to take the offer, of course, and you can pass on as you would had I not called you here, but I would ask you to consider it, at least_ ," she said.

He nodded, slowly. A nod of cautious understanding, rather than agreement. To be singled out by a goddess - well, that had to mean something. He _should_ at least consider the offer. "What would you have me do?"

" _As I said - hunt down those who think themselves above death. Bring them to my stockade for punishment, and rehabilitation. You obey my laws, without question, you exist outside of the cycle as my reaper, with powers that I afford you, and you carry out my judgements as I pass them to you. Until the time comes that you or I decide to bring an end your service, you protect, above all, the balance. In exchange, you receive more time to your existence than other mortal beings, you can move between all of our many planes as you need to, and you may brush with the living on occasion, if you so wish. I've been told mortal minds have needs like companionship_."

She paused, and tapped a talon or a claw or a nail against the unyielding stone below her fingers. " _Excluding those you knew while you were living_ ," she added carefully, her eyes looking through to his deepest foundations again. " _You may not approach them_."

"...I see," he said, and tried to remember if there was anyone he'd even want to see from his life. There were bonds there, definitely, some people whom he had been fond of, but their faces were blurry, their names fogged over. He'd best forget about them anyway. He wanted to forget about all of it.

It didn't sound like a bad offer, really. As nice as the thought of eternal rest in the astral sea was, he wasn't ready for that yet. He wasn't ready to be confined again, and though a deal with a goddess was undoubtedly its own kind of chain, it sounded a lot more free and a lot more interesting than the alternative.

And - something in him _burned_ for this. Something among his foggy memories was smouldering, still, filling his chest with bitter smoke that demanded... retribution. Revenge, even. It was a dull kind of anger, restless and sparking, and the idea of being able to dole out punishment to those that deserved it spoke to that part of him. It sounded like catharsis.

" _So, do we have a deal, young one?_ " the Queen prompted, breaking him out of his deliberations. He blinked, and lifted his head towards the sound before quickly averting his eyes again, dizzied by the even the brief exposure to that shifting apparition he'd received.

Still, he thought, he should probably try to get used to that, shouldn't he?

"I, um - yes," he said, still kneeling but holding himself with slightly more dignity than before. He lifted his head, and did his best to look at the space just to one side of the Queen's rippling face. "We do."

A part of him fancied that she smiled, but it was hard to tell. " _Good. Stand up_ ," she commanded, and he did. She was his goddess now, after all. And she waved a hand, or something like it. " _You'll need these_."

A large, black-feathered cloak appeared across his shoulders in a burst of dark flames, and an enormous scythe with an onyx blade half as long as he was tall materialised out of the air in front of him. He lunged to grab it before it toppled to the floor, knocking it around awkwardly in his hands, and for a split-second his fingers flashed to bone around the handle, stark white against the overbearing darkness of the room, before his muscles and skin reknitted themselves over the top in dark tendrils of flesh. The sight made him shiver, but - it also gave him an idea.

" _Now, I'm sure we can find someone to take you under their wing for now_ ," his Queen was saying, " _You'll need to_ \--"

He shut his eyes tight and carefully cleared his throat. "Um, i-if I may," he started, and balked under a gust of bitingly cold air that blew right through to his bones. "I-I'm - apologies for interrupting, my, um - my queen, but - if I could ask a question?"

" _...Very well_ ," the Raven Queen growled, eyes that could number two or two hundred boring straight through him. " _I would not make a habit of interrupting me, though, little one_."

"O-of course, it's just--" He held out a hand in front of him, flexing his fingers by way of demonstration. "This, um - this form, uh - well, it isn't, isn't _real_ , is it? I mean, my real body is - is buried somewhere, right?"

His Queen fixed him with an unreadable look. " _Something like that. You're mostly correct. It's not quite... how would one put this... corporeal. It can exert physical power, and it takes up physical space, but it doesn't strictly... exist. Nothing more than a construct - a projection of your soul_."

"Then - then can it be... um... altered?" he asked cautiously, and gestured to the new cloak and the scythe in his hand. "Like you just - you just made these _appear_ , so can you - could you change me, too? Make me look, or, um - or sound different? Permanently?"

His Queen's head tilted with the intrigue of a teacher whose student had just asked a particularly unexpected question, and her - her talons, or claws, or whatever they were, beat out an idle rhythm on her throne. "... _Your form can be changed, but it's something that's done under your own will_ ," she told him. " _And for it to be stable, it can't be too far removed from the core essence of your being_."

A seed of doubt took hold in his heart.

" _But, I think what you have in mind will be perfectly centered_ ," the Queen continued, seemingly unbothered. " _Just will it, and it will be so. You've a creative mind, do you not?_ "

He stared at her for a second. Gods, could it really be that easy?

He opened his mouth, thought better of it, closed it again, then nodded quickly and gripped the rough wood of the scythe with both hands. He closed his eyes, took a breath, and focused on... himself. On what he knew was the core of his being, and had been for a very, very long time.

Bright white flames engulfed his figure from his feet upwards, climbing and consuming and rebuilding. They felt like ice and hot electricity in equal measure, but didn't bring any pain. Just change.

As the last of the flames flickered out, he looked at his hands in front of him. They looked... almost the same. Almost. Most things felt the same, but at the same time, he felt more himself than he ever had in his life.

He was pulled away from his thoughts by a question.

" _...Is it what you wanted_?"

"It--"

He stopped and cleared his throat, startled by the sound of his own voice. But it _was_ his voice. It was exactly what he'd wanted. And this - this was permanent, not just an illusion that would flicker out when the spell ended or his magic ran dry. This was - well. Given his new profession, it was forever.

"Y-yes," he managed, after a few more moments, then cleared his throat again and added, stronger, "Thank you, my queen, it's - it's perfect."

His Queen chuckled once again, and where before the sound had filled him with terror he now barely shivered. He had nothing to fear from her amusement. " _I had no hand in this, my little fledgling. You merely turned the centre of your being outwards_ ," she said, almost fondly. " _But, I do think this suits you better than that ill-fitting flesh you wore before_."

He tried not to let his eyes mist over in front of the immense power that was his new employer and the arbiter of the laws of life and death, but it was a close thing. She smiled - or at least, he thought she did. The Raven Queen isn't a being that can really be perceived.

"Thank you, my queen," he murmured, allowing himself a small smile of his own. "I think so too."

It was quiet, momentarily. Nothing but the dim crackle of arcane flames flickering in the corners of the room. Then, his Queen gave a short, contented trill, and shooed the moment away with a clap of - well, they could have been hands. She clapped, regardless: once, and loudly. " _Wonderful. Now, one final matter. I need to be able to summon you, after all. How should I refer to my newest employ?_ "

He blinked at her, unsure of what was being asked of him. "Refer to...?"

" _Your name, child,_ " his Queen sighed, weary, her attention already seeming to be drifting away to other business. " _What is it?_ "

"...My name," he repeated softly. She nodded, he thought. Looking was a little easier now, but her features still swam like a river of oil under his gaze. "You don't... know it already?" he asked.

" _I'd like for you to tell me_ ," his Queen said, sounding almost like she was smiling.

He made to reply, and got as far as opening his mouth before realising that he didn't have an answer. He supposed that this was another thing that he could leave buried deep and happily forgotten.

He ran his fingers over the grain of the wood in his hands again, and stood up a little straighter.

"Call me Kravitz."

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I haven't posted any canonverse stuff in a while, so this was fun to come back to ^^


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